Peter Ward

My friend Peter Ward, who has died aged 95, was described in July 1936 as "probably the most beautiful runner in the country and certainly one of the best". Soon afterwards he ran in the final of the 5,000 metres at the Berlin Olympics, and at his death was believed to be the oldest surviving male member of the British team.

The son of the Cambridge economist Dudley Ward and his German wife Annemarie, Peter was educated at Stowe school and St John's College, Cambridge. At Cambridge, where he read economics, Peter won a blue for athletics and a half-blue for cross-country, captaining both teams. In 1935, at the International Universities Games, in Budapest, he set a new games record for the 5,000m. In 1936, competing in the AAA championship, he set a record for the 3 miles that stood for 10 years. This clinched his place in the British Olympic team for Berlin, where his fluent German required him to engage in chit-chat with Hitler and his henchmen.

On leaving Cambridge, Peter became a stockbroker. The second world war, in which he became a major in the Royal Artillery, cut short his career as an international runner. After the war he left the City and set up a workshop in London making wooden toys. These were painted by Lona Fradeletto, who, in 1948, became his wife. When the workshop burnt down, in 1951, the couple moved back to Peter's parents' house, the Old Vicarage, Grantchester, which had been given to Dudley by Rupert Brooke's mother as a token of the close friendship between Dudley and her son. Peter lived there for the next 30 years, until Jeffrey Archer made him an offer he couldn't refuse.

Operating from a folly in the Old Vicarage grounds, Peter and a friend of his, Cecil Chapman, set up Grant Instruments, making thermostatically controlled baths. Within a few years, almost every scientific laboratory in the country was using Grant Instruments' equipment. Peter then sold the business to his partner and started Grant Instrument Developments, making recording thermometers and associated electronic equipment.

In his spare time Peter restored musical boxes and other automata. He retired to a house in Cley, on the north Norfolk coast, where he would be seen in all weathers combing the beach for cornelians, driftwood and other odds and ends.

Peter is survived by his son Charlie, and by three granddaughters and a grandson.